Your greatest Beatleg moment

[Lord Reith]

For me it was, undoubtedly, Soldier Of Love during a trip to a local record store. The owner stuck a 45 of it on the turntable and that two minutes is burned forever into my brain. I can still see the record on the turntable, spinning. I was completely transfixed by it, and even though I could hear him blabbing about something to me in the background I didn't understand a word he said. He may as well have been speaking in Martian. It was one of the great moments of my life. Great song, unbelievably great singing and the shock of it blindsiding me out of nowhere.

Get goosebumps just thinking about it.

So what about you guys... what was your "best Beatleg moment"?

[Mr Bump]

For many years, I had only a passing interest in boots, going back to the days when they were issued out in low-quality LPs without proper annotation, often sounding pretty terrible. They used to circulate often on home cassette copies, of which I had several. Even when better CDs came out (Ultra Rare Trax etc) I was so skeptical of boots that I took little interest, psychologically pigeon-holing them as just more of the same.

I remember being delighted to tape the legendary How Do You Do It from a Kenny Everett radio show in the 1980s, and also a rehearsal of Maxwell's Silver Hammer which he said (and I believed) was recorded in John's garage. (It's actually from the Nagra tapes, of course.)

My revelation moment was finding out about, and then downloading, A/B Road. I was amazed. Not long after, I discovered the Purple Chick series of expanded studio albums and downloaded them all, burnt them to disc and printed out the covers. Still got them all - and from there, I've never looked back

[Albert Grove]

The Deccagone 45s in 1977 with their non matching pic sleeves but such a clear sound, and of course Ultra Rare Trax.

[Kwai Chang]

The outtake of SFF on the boot of the same name.
Then, a bunch of SFF on Nothing Is Real.
The Euro copy of Not Guilty LP was the first version of the title track that wasn't Frenzy And Distortion(the rest of the album was junk).
But none of those moments can match hearing Ultra Rare Trax for the first time. The new stuff was superb yet all I could think of was
WHY DON'T THE OFFICIAL RECORDS SOUND THIS GOOD???
I still want to know why!
That was a long time ago.
I was pretty thrilled when I heard L.S. Bumblebee and Have You Heard The Word. The first boots I ever heard. 1976!
Even Decca Tapes were inspiring in 1978.
The truth is...
the REAL action is taking place here. Bootleg collectors have never known this kind of opportunity, quality, selection, education, etc.
It keeps getting better. It is pure irony!
Ooga ooga ooga chaka!
KC

[RunoutGroove]

Vigotone Get Back Journals 11LP Box Set. I remember my local dealer getting a crate of these. I couldn't afford the deluxe version in the box with the straps and perfect facsimile of the Let It Be book, I did however get the cheaper Vinyl box set, all different colour vinyls with a supposed 1/2 speed remaster of the 'Get Back' LP.

Unfortunately I recently sold it, but New Blue Soap has made up for that!

[billychildish]

Picking up one of those early 80's boots with a white cover and a photocopied sheet and hearing "How Do You Do It" for the first time. It was a revelation!

[Leaping Armadillos]

Finding the Decca audition on CD at Leopold's Records in Berkeley, California in 1991. I remember vividly standing in the store shaking while holding the CD in both hands feeling like I had won the lottery and needed to buy this before someone found out this was unauthorized and told me I couldn't buy it. I was pretty clueless to the bootleg world at that point, but I had read many books and knew about the Decca audition. To hold it in my hand felt decadent and exhilarating.

[Track06]

The Beatles - Live im Star-Club Hamburg, 1962 (EURO-TREND CD 152.179)(1995)
hxxps://we.tl/t-a0TaZ1kIMK
I got that one when I was twelve, being my first or second CD.

[applebonkerz]

I had bought various vinyl boots for years, some based on reputation, some based on cover art, most based on hope and guesses. Too often they turned out to be expensive disappointments. Then I read a blurb in some publication of the current release of Ultra Rare Trax Vol1 & Vol2 on CD being a total game-changer. I made a bee-line to the local store who was most-likely to carry it. That store did indeed have it, and it was a game-changer. Those two dayglo cover CDs, as short of content as they were, became the greatest Beatleg moment because those sounds that came out of them were everything I had been hoping and searching for all of those previous years. The great flood-gates were open soon afterward.

[InnerLight]

I'm probably going to agree with Track06. I bought Live at the Star Club (Lingasong release) on vinyl as a 9yo kid or so. I had no idea that the rights were disputed or anything of that nature, or that it was essentially a quasi-beatleg. But it was an older recording with songs I had never heard, and live also. This was probably my "in" to the Beatleg world.

The most memorable moments were probably the days of finding original silvers of the classic stuff like Ultra Rare Trax, Artifacts and the like.

Being pretty much a life-long Beatles fan and knowing the released takes by heart, the oddest moments were when I started realizing that I couldn't remember which take was the commercial version or the boot versions I listened to as much or more.